In those cities most self-conscious about their claim to be part of English history, like Oxford or Bath, the shops where you could have bought a dozen nails, home-made cakes or had a suit run up, have shut down and been replaced with places selling teddy bears, T-shirts and gimcrack souvenirs.
-- Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People
And as for coincidences in books -- there's something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can't help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack.
-- Peter Brooks, "Obsessed with the Hermit of Croisset", New York Times, March 10, 1985
